To transport a wild animal, consider option #3.

July 1, 2026: 🗓 

To whom it may concern + anyone that may need to transport an injured wild animal to a rehabilitation place someday,

I saw a duck with a broken wing at Douglas Park in Santa Monica. I called animal control, and they told me they don’t have funding to transport animals to rehabilitation places. They only have two options. They can either euthanize him if it’s bad or leave him there if they deem he can survive on his own with the injury.

But they did say they can help me capture the duck when I told them I can transport him and have confirmation from International Bird Rescue in San Pedro that they can take him in. Three animal control workers arrived in a van, and they had him settled in a cardboard travel carrier in under 10 minutes like they were Amazon prime.

It was so helpful because I couldn’t get him to go in a box by myself. They even brought their own really nice box with professional air holes. Mine was an old packing box that lost its structural integrity because I made too many air holes, and I was worried the duck would tear through the air holes and escape mid-trip.

I don’t know if location matters. Like would they send a team out if the duck was in someone’s backyard instead of a public park? I didn’t think to ask. Also, this happened two years ago. And I don’t know how other cities do things, but it might be an option if someone needs help, in case they don’t know about this (because I didn’t).

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The following is like the neighbor’s house of this post, which is separated by this line of trees, just like how people do in real life.

What the following is is a longer version of the story, in case anyone cares.

I actually called animal control to tell them about the duck the day before, and they were like, okay we’ll send someone out to handle it. And the next day, the duck was still there. So I called them back, which is when they told me about the two options.

And I was like, but even if he can survive, what happens when his flock wants to fly south for the winter? Does he have to watch them fly away? Then I was like, oh right I’m not in Minnesota anymore. Which reminded me of Dorothy in Wizard of Oz saying they’re not in Kansas anymore. She said it in a literary way to emphasize the contrast between locations, whereas I said it because I literally forgot the locations.

Later, I thought of the wizard Merlyn in Sword in the Stone, how he lives backwards through time while the people around him live forward through time, which causes him to forget which things haven’t happened yet for everyone else.

Because of this, his version of the sentence is like a combination of Dorothy’s version and my version, except location is replaced with time period. His character is a literary way for the author to emphasize the contrast between time periods, and he also literally forgets the time period.

Actually, both Merlyn’s version and my version aren’t really about memory. Like if someone asks me where I am right now, I wouldn’t say Minnesota. I would say California. But it’s like my brain was running on an old set of considerations that aren’t relevant anymore. Maybe not all the time, or even ever at all. But in a scenario where someone wanted that to make sense, it’s an explanation.

As for Merlyn, if someone accosts him in the street and asks him what year it is (or just asks him normally), he’d probably say the right year without having to think about it.

So what happened is that they did send someone out, and they deemed him able to survive on his own without assistance. And I was like, well it’s good they didn’t euthanize him, but if I’d known those were the only two options, I wouldn’t have called. But because I did call, I found out about mystery option #3.